Arun Sues'dai! :)

ie... GOOD MORNING! :)

As per usual when I'm in tropical countries, I can't seem to sleep in past 6am, so I decided to go out for a run on the river front this morning. Well, I wasn't the only one up and about early - the boardwalk was filled with people doing their early morning exercises... in the form of boy band street moves! :) i actually had seen maybe 60 or 100 people gathered dancing to music (exercising) together in the main streets from the airport and wished i'd had my camera out to snap a shot of the fun. if there were more people this time i might have jumped in.

and - I stopped briefly to watch a bit of a match of soccer-volleyball! There's actually a Khmer name for it, which one of the men told me, but I can't remember now. Apparently it's a national sport, very popular here and Malaysia. I was pretty impressed - check out the guy in red karate kicking the ball over the net!

Later I took a walk to the Central Market - I was told to keep walking along a road until I saw a big yellow building. I passed quite a few yellow ones on the way but finally I found a really big and really yellow one. :) 

A nice lady hand-pedal biking with her grandson along the way:

 
I got myself a coconut to sip on from this lady

and took a little stroll around the market. I love markets, they are always busy and bustling and full of life. And always colourful! :)

Lots of sea food at this market (which I didn't buy)!

I did, however, buy myself a ridiculously big giant hat that comes down in the back and covers your neck and shoulders for $2, for when our team will be out under the sun building the primary school in Pursat. It is kind of ridiculous... and kind of awesome :)

Haha okay, all in a day's work, and it's only 10am. Now to real work - need to read over these project documents and make up my interview surveys with project beneficiaries.

and hopefully make my way through some of this Learn Khmer book I picked up at the market:

Taking advantage of internet here while I can... probably won't get to do so much blogging after today, especially when our UNION team gets in, but anyways, until next time! :)

xo
Anternu (my name in Khmer) :)

Welcome to Cambodia!

This has definitely been the warmest welcome I've had to any country I've traveled to! :)  Well, it's a hottt and humid 35ºC + here - haha -but I've been so pleased by what a warm welcome I've received!

Any other time I've traveled, I've had to figure out what to do, where I'm going from the airport, how to get there, who to talk to and how to communicate with someone who can help me out! This time... it has been AWESOME!

As soon as I arrived in Phnom Penh and walked out of the airport, I had a taxi with my name on it (well, my name was on the sign!) that HOPE sent to pick me up, a cell phone put into my hand, which rung about 2 minutes later with a call from Ly (Saint Ly, so affectionately called, so I've been told!) - HOPE's Cambodia Director - to welcome me to the country, and was dropped right off at an already-booked friendly little hotel in a nice area in town right by the river, where I'm now staying in a 3rd floor room overlooking the bustling street below.

  (my home for 2 nights!)

 ... and then 20 min later a good Cambodian friend from UPEACE came and picked me up and took me out for dinner! A-MA-ZING! this is the easiest travel I've ever had, and to Cambodia of all places, go figure! :)

BBQ dinner with Vicheth, who was in my very first class at UPEACE two years ago. He's a Social Development Programme researcher and program manager at CDRI, Cambodia's Development Policy Research Institute  and doing lots of really interesting stuff so it was great to catch up!

Well, it turns out that Cambodia is quite the UPEACE reunion hub! I had an awesome first day in Cambodia with more UPEACE friends who took their day to tour me to see the sights and sounds of Phnom Penh!  

Vicheth, Sopheada and Vicheth's super chatty little girl Sonisa, in front of the Royal Palace

with Satomi too, in front of the Cambodia National Museum! 

  The Independence Monument - built in 1957(?) after independence from 90 years of French colonial rule

Tourist shots - typical, but so necessary. :)

It was great awesome to catch up -  Satomi's working with an NGO called International Hearts of Gold that focuses on physical & health education for primary schools in Cambodia, and Sopheada - worked with the Cambodian Centre for Peace Education, but is now packing up and moving to the US for a year on a research/professional development fellowship. Actually, before I even made it to Cambodia, I got to meet with Mo, another UPEACE friend in Bangkok working with Spirit in Education Movement, who met me at the airport and took me for lunch!

Mmm.. Pad Thai in Bangkok! :)

Great inspiring friends that can share the joys (and slight woes..) of working with NGOs! :)

A couple more photos from the day:

 Traditional Khmer lunch!

Soup, veggies, some kind of a shrimp paste... 

The immaculate river front area where I'm staying... 

I usually like getting away from tourist central when I travel, but today was a lot of fun! :)
 
I'm heading out to Pursat Province tomorrow to meet Ly and start my work with HOPE - won't be so posh and pampered in the villages, but I'll be in good hands. :) I'm not sure how much internet I'll have there but hopefully I'll be in touch again soon-ish!

Leah suen heuy! - Khmer for bye!

Rainbow (hmmm.. need to learn my name in Khmer tomorrow) :)

i'm in Cambodia!!

Where exactly am I??

HERE, in CAMBODIA, a beautiful little country in South East Asia between Thailand and Vietnam.


And WHY am I here? well, I am here with HOPE International Development Agency. HOPE exists to extend Christ's compassion to the neglected poor, and to educate North Americans about issues of poverty and development overseas. hmm.. why I exist? pretty much! :)

I've been working with HOPE since January as the Understanding Needs In Other Nations (UNION) Program Coordinator, and this is one of our summer trips for Canadian volunteers to visit and live, work, and serve alongside people in need in another country. The UNION program is intended to give people from our privileged society - like ourselves - an opportunity to live and learn about the people and development in a small struggling community. As the name implies, the purpose of UNION trips is to gain awareness and the needs of the poor, to encourage them with our presence and support, and to carry out work side by side with the people who live in these communities. 

So, our team of Canadians will be here in Cambodia, experiencing life and, among other things, working to help construct a primary school in Pursat Province.

I'm also here a week and a bit early to (a) learn the ropes before our team gets in :)  and also, (b) to monitor and write an evaluation report for some of our "Innovative Projects" here. which, by the way, are AWESOME and i'm looking forward to seeing them in person. HOPE has been working in Cambodia since 1991, and done a LOT of good work here and helped many many families journey out of poverty and towards self-reliance. Check out out this page about HOPE's work in Cambodia, and also a video on our website about HOPE in Cambodia (just scroll over to Cambodia 2004). But they've also been doing some special pilot projects in recent years and these are the ones I get to have a look at more closely: dry season rice farming, animal banks, biosand filters for clean water, composting toilets, and solar lights. anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing these!!

I've been meaning to get this up onto HOPE's website, but haven't had the chance yet - but, until then, here's a nifty newsletter about this Cambodia 2010 UNION trip. Go check it out, if even just for the fact that I made my first electronic newsletter, haha! :)

Anyways, just a little glimpse of what I'm doing here - I'll share more soon when I get the chance!

For now... WELCOME TO CAMBODIA! :)

More to come later - some friends are picking me up to take me out and around town! :)

xo

rainbow =)

--- blog under construction ---

ok - so this blog isn't actually officially up and running yet.

but hopefully its grand ribbon-cutting premiere will be coming soon. For now:

i once took this picture once-upon-a-Norway-roadtrip sometime in 2007ish. i think we found it somewhere near the border of Sweden. it's basically a road sign - with a million signs pointing in different directions to places around the world. i thought it was funny. who would have guessed i would have spent 2 months in France, 2 months in Uganda, a year in Costa Rica, 2 months in Guatemala since then... and now a month in Cambodia?

who knows!  thanks for joining me to Cambodia.. it keeps my rather piecemeal life a little more together!!  :)

xo
rainbow